Elections

Dick Morris On His Reputation, Writing For The National Enquirer And What Trump Needs To Do To Win

Dick Morris (Screenshot/YouTube/dickmorrisreports)

Jamie Weinstein Senior Writer
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Dick Morris thinks he knows how to get Donald Trump elected — and it’s not for the presumptive GOP nominee to do the opposite of what Morris prescribes.

“It’s just B.S.,” the notorious political consultant turned conservative political commentator told The Daily Caller in an interview, rejecting the perception among the Washington political class that he has a less than stellar track record of reading the political tea leaves these days, particularly after his confident declarations that Mitt Romney would win the 2012 presidential election.

There is even a running joke on Twitter that the opposite of whatever Dick Morris predicts will actually come to pass.

“My response to those people who are happy to say stuff like that is, first of all, look at my full record and secondly, I don’t think I recall any presidents who they got elected,” Morris snapped, alluding to his role in helping get Bill Clinton re-elected in 1996.

In his new book “Armageddon,” written with his wife Eileen McGann, Morris says he provides a “practical plan” for Trump to win the White House.

“We’ve lost two presidential elections now and we need a plan and a way of winning that we don’t just replicate the same mistakes, like we did in ’12 when we replicated all the mistakes of ’08,” he said. “And it recommends a strategy that really is akin to a boxer, to have a right jab but also a left cross, a left hook.”

The “right jab” Morris refers to is for Trump to hammer the Democrats on Obamacare, illegal immigration and not taking terrorism seriously. But Trump also has to appeal to Bernie Sanders voters, Morris says, with a “left hook.”

“Then there’s this vast pool of voters who have manifest their dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party establishment, their dissatisfaction with its globalism,” he said, speaking of those who supported Sanders. “And it’s crucial for Donald Trump to appeal to those voters through a left hook.”

Morris believes Trump is primed to appeal to such voters with his support for renegotiating trade agreements, reducing America’s military footprint around the world and getting tough with Wall Street.

Earlier this month, reports suggested Morris was actually on the verge of officially joining Trump’s campaign. Morris knows Trump well. His father served as a real estate attorney for both Trump and Trump’s father Fred, and Morris has interacted with Trump socially at Trump’s Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere.

“Donald came to dinner at our house frequently when I was growing up,” Morris said, explaining just how far back his relationship goes with The Donald. (Morris says he has not, however, talked to Trump in at least a year.)

While Morris says he sends “several” memos to Trump campaign staffers “each day,” the 69-year-old claims he has no interest in joining the campaign in any official capacity.

“When you say join, I’d say join is a different word,” he explained. “I’m not and I never have been looking for a full-time job, 9-5, advising the campaign. Yes, I am interested and I do send them a lot of memos and a lot of ideas and in fact wrote a book for them filled with advice as to what they should do. In a sense, this book is very much of a public communication to the Trump campaign of what they need to do in order to win.”

The Trump campaign told TheDC in an email that it welcomes Morris’s contributions.

“To my knowledge, he has no association with the campaign,” campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said. “We appreciate his support and contributions, which are presumably made in an unofficial capacity.”

At the beginning of June, the National Enquirer hired Morris as the supermarket tabloid’s chief political correspondent. Critics mocked the move as a new low point in Morris’s career, but Morris says that just demonstrates his detractors’ elitism.

“What I would say to them is, ‘you’re a damn snob,’” he said, when asked to respond to his critics. “Anytime you can reach a million American voters and speak to them directly as the National Enquirer does, you jump at that opportunity. The New York Times reaches I think, 700,000 voters but National Enquirer beats that by 50 percent.”

Latest figures actually show the New York Times with a greater reach than the National Enquirer, even without taking Sunday circulation and online readership into account.

Though Morris is proud of his affiliation with the National Enquirer, he seems less enthused to discuss some of the publication’s recent reporting. Asked to respond to a few National Enquirer political headlines, like that Bill Clinton has brain damage, Morris said he had no interest in doing so.

“I don’t want to do this,” he said. “The answer to that question is no [Bill Clinton does not have brain damage], but I’m not a spokesman for the National Enquirer any more than you are for The Daily Caller. I’ll answer for what I’ve written but not what they’ve written.”

But as someone who used to be so close with the Clintons, Morris does seem to be in a position to provide insight into some of the National Enquirer’s political reporting, like whether Hillary Clinton is really a lesbian.

“I have no information on that,” Morris said.

Is, as the National Enquirer has suggested, Clinton family friend Webster Hubbell the real father of Chelsea Clinton?

“I have no information on that,” Morris again responded.

Unsurprisingly, Morris is much more comfortable discussing who Trump should pick as his running mate than the veracity of various Enquirer stories.

“My first choice would be Condi Rice, if she’d do it,” Morris said. (Rice has already indicated that she has no interest in being Trump’s VP.)

“I also think Joni Ernst would be great,” he went on, speaking of the freshman Iowa senator. “I also think that there is a real possibility of his choosing a business person, a Carly Fiorina. He’s not going to pick her, and it need not be a female business person, but somebody like a Carl Icahn where he can really represent that he’s above politics and a team to go in to turn the country around.”

If these suggestions have not yet been provided in one of his daily memos to the Trump campaign, you have to imagine they will hit a number of inboxes in Trump Tower shortly.

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